Benjamin Passione
Portrait In Orange Circles, 32" x 24", Oil On Canvas
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to share a new body of abstract oil paintings by Benjamin Passione in No Time To Be Shy. These vibrant paintings mark Passione's continued exploration of atmospheric color fields, layered with his linear, script-like markings. These new works are larger, lighter and brighter than before and feature the emergence of spherical shapes drawn in Passione’s signature style. Passione’s poetic titles continue to offer inspiration and invite the viewer to search the scene for possible hidden imagery and underlying narratives.
Passione’s abstracts are like swirling celestial panoramas. Large swathes of blue, orange and pink become blustery skies punctuated by shapes that suggest tilted horizons, textured landscapes, or dynamic, watery pools. While the primary colors are vivid and saturated, Passione’s atmospheric environments contain a quality reminiscent of J. M. W. Turner’s works, such as Sun Setting Over a Lake (c.1840), his many storm-tossed ships at sea or his famous depiction of the burning of the British Houses of Parliament.
Atop these dynamic, Turner-esque compositions, Passione adds repetitive, curvilinear, marks and employs a variety of brushwork to communicate playful shapes, peaks and valleys. There is boyish amusement in Passione’s approach as these marks come together to suggest a group of animated figures or perhaps the chaotic movements of a grove of windswept trees.
Image Right: Portrait In Orange Circles, 32" x 24", Oil On Canvas
Passione’s inspiration harkens back to the visual concerns of early abstract artists through the shift into Surrealism. While Wassily Kandinsky’s colorful vistas from the 1910s could provide formal inspiration, Arshile Gorky’s 1940s titles mirror Passione’s with energetic, descriptive lines, seemingly freed from absurdist poetry. Passione’s script-like marks could also be interpreted as the automatic gestures of an unconscious mind, a concept valued by the 20th-century Pataphysicians, Surrealists, and Dadaists.
Passione’s paintings embrace the nonsensical as he delves ever deeper into a self-created world of whimsy. And while there is an underlying tension and seriousness in his abstract impressions, he skillfully manages to balance them with sincerity, earnest humor, self-awareness and play.
Benjamin Passione was born in Willingboro, NJ in 1987. He attended life drawing classes at the Moore College of Art & Design and then completed the Certificate program at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. His works have been exhibited in group shows across the region, and this is his third solo show at Gross McCleaf Gallery. Passione lives and works in Philadelphia with his wife, fellow artist Mickayel Thurin, and their son, Maurice. Passione and Thurin were Artists in Residence of the Philadelphia Museum of Art during the summer of 2023.
Rhapsody In Red, 42" x 44", Oil On Canvas
January 11 - February 3, 2024
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 13, 1 - 4 pm
